


The Pain of Second Starfall

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [10]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Apocalypse, Astronomy, Clocks, Dreams, F/F, Fantasy, Flash Fic, Gen, Happy Ending, Implied Eugenics, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Medieval, Meteor, Microfic, Mythology - Freeform, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Religion, Stars, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22149151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: A single star fell from the night to earth, or, more accurately, into the sea. Had you stood on the shore, you would have watched as a flaming thread dropped down toward the horizon, its mirror image in the water rising up to meet it. Your gut would have felt the impact, and you would have been swallowed, drowned, before your senses returned to you...***Long ago, a star fell to earth, bringing with it a great apocalypse. But stars have sisters—and around the world, mystical clocks tick, tick, tick...
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	The Pain of Second Starfall

**Author's Note:**

> This is a version of the original Twitterfic, same title, posted over at my now-deactivated personal account in December 2019. It has been given minor edits for consistency with other stories and readability on AO3. ❤️ 
> 
> **SUGGESTED RE-READING:** Re-reading everything up to this story from ["The Botanist's Most Important Failure"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21990349) should refresh your mind. Don't worry—it won't take longer than a half hour.
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

In the botanist's old country they tell a story—for all religions are made of such—in which a single star fell from the night to earth.

This was millennia ago. A time almost out of human comprehension. A time when the birds and wolves spoke to us more frequently, and the fey still lived in the east, and angels crowed proudly on every mountaintop.

That kind of time.

A single star fell from the night to earth, or, more accurately, into the sea.

Had you stood on the shore, you would have watched as a flaming thread dropped down toward the horizon, its mirror image in the water rising up to meet it. Your gut would have felt the impact, and you would have been swallowed, drowned, before your senses returned to you. 

To tell you that people died after First Starfall, countless, numberless people, thinking people, unthinking people, bad people and good people, young people and old people—

You wouldn't fully understand. So just hold that as a fact in your mind, not your heart. 

In the botanist's country, they remember this time, this apocalypse, which is why they tell stories about it. They are (if you believe them) the only ones who truly remember it.

Who could forget a star choosing to end its own life, and those of a billion others? But everyone did, except them, in that old country.

When you are the only one who remembers something that important, you grow confused, and then sad, and then angry. And then all three consume you at once, as crows on carrion. So in that old country they are waiting, because they know there will be another starfall. They build their special clocks, and they seek out the great crater, the great displacement of water, they know must exist though they cannot find it on a map. They ensure all in their country are healthy, and able, and reproducing, because there must be a strong surplus when Second Starfall wracks the earth and even the greatest of citadels tremor.

They rage and are saddened, because no other nation seems to know, or care. 

It is hard to be alone, isn't it?

It is harder still when you cannot prove your fears.

Ah, if only they remembered the most important part of the story—

That (in that time when the air still smelled of magic etcetera etcetera) there was a Great Clockmaker. He set out to every tribe and people and nation on earth, and provided them with very special clocks to measure the time until Second Starfall. These clocks could not be destroyed, only buried and forgotten.

So they were. A thousand clocks, hidden in keeps and temples, cast out to the sea, used as war-tables and sleds and rooftops for doghouses.

If you close your eyes, you can almost hear them ticking in unison, their gears growling— 

But that's if you believe the core of the story, that Starfall ever happened. Who cares, really?

The botanist Valériane de la Rue wasn't sure if she believed or not; she only knew that the idea of Second Starfall had already hurt her deeply, and she fled. That is the only truth. 

Actually—

That, and how, after a long night watching the stars with her lover, she sleeps soundly, aided by her namesake. There in the crook of the chief guard's arm, dreamless, her breath trickles over her lover's collarbone.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment or a kudos or whatever the heck if this tickled your fancy. There shall be more! ❤️
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** This story is when the universe coalesced completely. A suggestion of a terrible apocalypse coming to a fairy tale world where everything works out. Unf.
> 
> It's probably my favorite SecStar tale so far.


End file.
